It's been about an hour since the final voice message played and this film closed and I sit here absolutely floored by the power of Chantal Akerman's cinema. Her work specifically in the 70s has become something of great importance to me personally. Her films in this period are formally rigorous, pushing the form into areas that I'm not sure had been approached yet and it's a shame that nobody remembers her for anything other than Jeanne Dielman.

Les Rendez-vous d’Anna is a deeply personal kind of autobiographical tale. Anna moves through cities showing her films having short encounters with strangers, friends and family and each scene is filled with a kind of unknowing sadness that seeps through. Anna is…

In New Orleans, everything is demarcated temporally as "before the storm" or "after the storm." The entire world is shaped and colored by Hurricane Katrina and the federal floods, and it comes up in unexpected ways, from casual references used to indicate when something happened to significant, simple explanations for why something is the way it is now. It's always there. In The Meetings of Anna, the watershed moment that seems to haunt all of the characters is apparently WWII.

It's there haunting everyone Anna meets, directly or indirectly, from lost loved ones to the economic results of the war. It has, over the 30 years between the end of it and the time of this film, altered countless lives,…

"I miss you. I have no one to talk to."
"But you never talked to me."

Feelings of loneliness and isolation radiate through every frame, yet there's just enough tenderness to keep me going. People are drawn to Anna, and they want to tell her everything, but to know someone's secrets is not the same as being close to them. To watch Anna through Akerman's static camera as she tries to find a real love in these lonely cities is richly engaging. It's a slow movie -- I would be lying if I said parts of it didn't bore me. However, in the case of films like this, where the narrative takes a back seat to character and atmosphere, I…

“you say you’re happy and i believe you. you look happy.”

hearing someone that has known anna her whole life tell her she looks happy just proves how little others are able to understand her. or how little they tune into her, while looking at her to provide something for them. she is detached from almost everyone she interacts with, and yet they perceive her as an open, empathetic being to unload their thoughts onto.

at times, it was hard to watch something that felt like looking in a mirror. it’s rare to find a connection where there’s a balance between what you give and receive back from someone. it’s so easy to feel close to someone because they know…

Chantal Akerman almost exclusively works on horizontal planes of space. Her compositions are known for their flat, minimalist staging, and she usually cuts with perpendicular angles to emphasize each shot's flatness. So one of the many surprising shots in Les Rendez-Vous d'Anna comes early. Anna leaves her hotel in Germany, and the camera tracks alongside her in a horizontal dolly. Suddenly, a flash of vertical motion interrupts the frame. It's a female maid, almost nonchalantly in the background, waving a sheet as she makes the bed. Another few moments later, another maid appears in the depth of the frame, also working. Akerman then cuts to a perpendicular frame, as Anna continues to walk down the hallway, and three more maids…

Where do they all come from? All these lonely faces. The ones that fill the train cars that Anna passes by, a myriad of shadows and sketches of the withdrawn. The same faces are found on the various people she meets throughout the film. In these brief encounters she lets others into her loneliness and they let her into theirs. They talk, she listens. They confide in Anna expressions of their isolation. For a moment maybe they don't have to feel so alone. But the ephemeral nature of these encounters points to an impossibility, it's all kind of silly.

Reaching the end of a long quarantined summer, several people contacted me making plans to meet up before school started up…

Today's "mainstream cinema" seems to reflect the fact that everybody is always hurrying somewhere, that everybody has always so much to do and think about that the films themselves have to keep on hurrying and keeping the audience similarly occupied as they are in the real life. The only difference is that watching must be entertaining and this effect is reached for with ridiculous stories and recycled narratives.

With this film alone Akerman shows that she is the great voice against this kind of development, The Meetings of Anna is slow in pace but it evokes the feeling of being in hurry and what it really means in a kind of metaphysical way. It isn't necessarily rebellion against the kind…

There are so few directors in cinema who can match Chantal Akerman when it comes to capturing the feeling of loneliness and wanting. This is most certainly the film from her that has affected me the most in regard. It's definitely because Anna is such an honest character, one who we're seeing at their most vulnerable. Her struggles of being a creative who has to battle her isolated feelings, despite the fact she's constantly traveling to attend screenings of her films. However that doesn't change anything for her, no matter how many countries she visits. There are two aspects that further showcased this, the use of hotels and trains. With hotel rooms, it provides a temporary substitute for a home.…

The simple voyage (and return) plot with a character jumping between interactions that build toward some insight, or at least look at the thematic streaks from different angles, can seem a bit inconsequential but deeply rewarding. I'm not sure Anna agrees, as she squanders her obvious talent for meeting people and getting them to open up with her. While they are pouring their hearts out about happiness lost with their broken relationships, she appears to barely even be listening and utterly disinterested in sharing her thoughts despite suffering from holding everything in.

On the other hand, it is rough to be so young and already start realizing that the route to lasting happiness is out of reach. Chantal Akerman makes…